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James: Spineless Metrolinx is failing transit users

What a mess we’ve made of transit planning in the city. And of all the culpable agencies and governments, Metrolinx is most blameworthy.

You may have forgotten that the provincial government established this obscure body called Metrolinx to coordinate transit planning in the Toronto and Hamilton region. It was supposed to provide clear, independent thinking, and deliver the best transportation solutions to the region’s growing congestion.

If the planned light rail transit line across Eglinton Ave. is a first test, Metrolinx has failed — spectacularly so.

Where Metrolinx should lead on Eglinton, it follows the dictates of political ideologues. Where it should set the agenda on transit planning, it defers to the personal plans of politicians who know less about transit than the nanny on the Bathurst bus. Where it should determine the best mode of transit along Sheppard, it is mum to the point of irresponsibility. Where it should be driving the agenda, it is left twisting in the wind.

Exaggeration? Consider this:

The TTC plans high-class, modern streetcar lines (LRT) along Eglinton, Sheppard and Finch as a start to a new ‘Transit City.’” The province commits $8.2 billion, the federal government $333 million. And Metrolinx says, “Great, thanks.”

Rob Ford is elected mayor, unilaterally decides he wants a subway instead of the LRT along Sheppard, east of Don Mills; wants nothing, really, on Finch; and wants all of the Eglinton line buried because he is philosophically opposed to streetcar tracks in the middle of the road, and the war on the car is over . . . and Metrolinx goes, “Aye, aye, sir.”

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, who is paying for all of this, afraid of the newly elected mayor, and concerned about his own waning popularity leading into a provincial election, agrees to Ford’s folly. Without input from council or legislature, they sign a non-binding memorandum of understanding that everyone immediately treats as inviolable. And to protect the province, McGuinty says Ford must find his own cash for the Sheppard subway extension because the mayor’s demand to bury the entire Eglinton line will gobble up almost all the transit cash earmarked for all three projects.

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A year later, Eglinton stations are being designed, tenders are coming in for projects, plans are underway for a new environmental assessment to bury the LRT that is designed for the wide expanses of Eglinton, into Scarborough, and city councillors like John Parker and Karen Stintz are kicking themselves, hoping to jerk Mayor Ford and council out of the horrible dream.

Apparently, the TTC is preparing a damning report that exposes this whole process for the outrage that it is. Apparently, the man (Gordon Chong) that Mayor Ford hired to find private sector partners to entirely build the Sheppard subway, can’t find takers for more than 20 to 30 per cent of the cost. Apparently, the whole silly mess is about to implode on the heads of the city councillors who sit on the Toronto Transit Commission — and, ultimately, on the head of city council.

Unless, of course, the mayor can keep it all under wraps.

This week, it exploded out it public. Stintz, the TTC chair appointed by Ford, must have felt she had Ford’s blessing to announce that she and other councillors were looking for a solution — a way to extricate themselves from the dilemma without leaving the mayor with egg on his face. Again.

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That explains all the buzz about drafting a new plan. Again.

The problem is that while these politicians mean well, the last thing transit users need are politicians with black pens drawing transit lines on white paper to satisfy a political compromise. Again.

For example, extending the Sheppard subway from Don Mills (remember, the Stub-way to nowhere) to Victoria Park Ave., only improves the line marginally — even as it gives Mayor Ford a political out to claim he did deliver a Sheppard subway.

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